


Waterbound

by illa_dixit



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Coulson Lives, Even if the only knew him for a couple hours, Everyone liked Coulson, Gen, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:36:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illa_dixit/pseuds/illa_dixit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>So say my name and don't forget</i><br/><i>The water still ain't got me yet</i><br/><i>Nothin' but I'm bound to roam</i><br/><i>Waterbound and I can't get home</i><br/>-Dirk Powell, "Waterbound" </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Phil Coulson is gone, and the Avengers mourn him in their own small ways.</p>
<p>But Coulson is one stubborn SOB, and nothing is quite that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - Phil

_‘Irreameabilis unda” (the wave from which there is no return)_

_-Virgil_

 Phil Coulson is dead.

He’s fully aware of this – it would be a little hard to mistake it when he remembers Loki’s staff piercing his lung, remembers sitting and trying to talk to Fury while feeling himself running out of air and knowing with a sort of horrible, final clarity that he was drowning in his own blood. He’d known when he exhaled that he wasn’t going to be breathing in again, and had heard rather than felt his heart stop beating.

But the world is probably safe – and Clint, too, if Natasha had any say in it  - and that’s some comfort. Of all the agents with the clearance to know anything about the Initiative, he was the only one who ever truly believed that it would work – even Fury had doubts about the ones they’d chosen being able to work together.

But Phil Coulson believed in them with a capital BELIEVE and that hasn’t changed now that he’s dead. He’s done his part; Earth is safe, and he can rest.

Inexplicably, though, he doesn’t want to. He’s never been one to stop when the job is done, because in his mind the job is rarely, if ever, actually finished. Coulson keeps trucking until he either falls over, or Clint drags him home (sometimes drugged). It’s just what he does.

Besides, saving the world probably came with paperwork, and really, none of that would get done by anyone except _maybe_ Captain America (who wouldn’t know how to do even a fifth of it) or Dr. Banner (who has probably fled for the nearest third world country by now).

(And also, if he’s being honest, he can’t imagine leaving without knowing for sure that Clint is okay.)

His thoughts are interrupted by movement in the empty landscape around him. From across the impossibly black river that flows gently at his feet, a figure appears in a creaky old boat, steadily moving it until he and Coulson are eye-to-empty-eye-socket.

The Ferryman holds out a hand formed only by delicate looking bones, startlingly white when compared to the pitch-dark waters of the river.

“No.” says Phil Coulson, agent of SHIELD, completer of impossible paperwork, wrangler of the most difficult agents and consultants in history, who has faced down any number of impossible things and doesn’t intend to stop at the River Styx.

 

The Ferryman doesn’t move.

 

 

Neither does Coulson. 


	2. 1 - Thor

**1 – Thor**

 

“ _He slept an iron sleep –_

_Slain fighting for his country”_

_-Homer_

It is over, and they are home. Loki has faced the Allfather’s Justice, which will not actually be dispersed until several visits with a mind-healer. Thor knows what the staff had done to those his brother captured, and anyone with half a sense for magic agrees that it probably ensnared Loki along the way.

There is a banquet, and this time he knows that his brother is safe and he shall have a path to Migard – to the Lady Jane and all of his new friends.

Yet, just as with the last feast that was held to celebrate his victory, he feels isolated and unusually melancholy. Again, he is the only one who mourns.

“Thor.” His mother sais softly, resting her hand on his arm. “What ails thee?”

“I grieve for the Son of Coul,” he admits, equally soft. “He made the greatest of sacrifices to delay Loki’s advance, to give us the time we required to put aside petty quarrels so that we might fight together as flawlessly as do the Warriors Three.”

“Perhaps, then, thou should tell us of him, that we may celebrate his sacrifice and he may be forever remembered in the halls of Asgard.” Freya suggests.

Thor considers this for a moment before nodding in determined satisifaction. “It is most fitting. Very well, gather all, that I may tell you of the most brave and selfless Phillip, the Son of Coul, a noble Agent of SHIELD.”

 

 

And Thor Odinson speaks loudly and clearly of Phil Coulson, a true warrior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually all written already - I’m just sort of posting things as I get them typed up in-between homework assignments. :)   
> (Also, Thor’s chapter is really short and I’m sorry!)


	3. 2 - Tony

**2 – Tony**

 

_“Toil for the brave!_

_The brave that are no more.”_

_-William Cowper_

After the cave, Tony had thought long and hard and examined his morals and found himself lacking. And then he wound up saving everyone from his own, misapplied tech, which just went to show that something had to be done. So he stopped his weapons company from making weapons and designed a new phone and his stock was rescued from its nosedive.

But Tony had also thought long and hard about the man he owed his life – owed _everything_ , really – to. He thought about memories and honor and values and then he went to Pepper and somehow convinced her to start a school – one that accepted anyone from anywhere, regardless of nationality, race, religion, orientation, if they could pay, or if they spent all of their time upside-down. One that taught peace and understanding and medicine and diplomacy and languages and everything Yinsen had ever expressed an interest in those three months in the cave.

Now, Tony thinks, he somehow has an even bigger debt to Phil Coulson, and this time he has no idea what to do about it. So he does what Coulson would have, and he works.

Not the filling-out-paperwork kind of work, of course, that was going way too far. No, Tony locks himself in his workshop in the tower and tries to create.

He’s invented a better coffee machine, three varieties of tiny but incredibly useful surveillance ‘bots, an improved taser, a machine to file paperwork, a better mousetrap, what he’s reasonably sure might be a Clint-proof lock, and a new alcoholic beverage before he comes out.

He still has no idea what to do.

So he builds a Captain America action figure that flies for no particular reason, and then makes one of Coulson that delivers a small electric shock when touched after its right arm is extended. Then he goes and waits outside the tower and runs up to the first kid he sees wearing a Captain America shirt (this part only takes five minutes, but Tony starts getting antsy after two and is really nervous by the four and a half minute mark).

“Excuse me.” He says charmingly to the kid’s mother (Tony remembers the last time he had talked to a kid without talking to the mother first _very_ clearly) before turning to the tiny, slightly glum looking boy in the Captain America t-shirt.

“Hey there,” he says, crouching to be eye-level with the kid. “So, you like Captain America?”

The kid’s eyes light up at this, and he nods enthusiastically, but doesn’t say anything.

“Well, I happen to have two gifts for you, okay?” Tony glances at the mother again and she nods – a bit wary, but she seems to have recognized him, which could either be could or bad, so Tony does what he does best and pushes his luck and presses the action figures into the boy’s hands. “Here.”

Tony lets him look confused at the Coulson figure before pointing as theatrically as possible at it.

“This,” he says grandly, “is Agent Coulson. He likes coffee and knows six ways to kill you with his big toe and likes paperwork way too much for his own good and is Captain America’s biggest fan and he died so that Captain America could save the world.”

The boy’s smile widens in understanding. “He’s a superhero!”

 “Exactly.” Says Tony, and walks off.

 

 

And Tony stark may think he hasn’t done enough, but at least now one more person knows, beyond a doubt, that Phil Coulson is a hero.


	4. 3 - Natasha

**3 – Natasha**

_“La Guarda meurt, mais ne se reud pas.”_

_(The guard dies, but does not surrender)_

_-(attributed to) Lieut. Gen. Pierre Jaques_

Natasha goes to the library.

 

She’s always valued books – both for the knowledge they hold and the escape they offer – and she knows some clean up is going to be needed after the destruction of the attack. She feels sort of bad about that, even if it’s not actually her fault.

But she goes anyway, and they’re grateful enough for the help that no one looks too closely at who she is. Not that she think’s they’d recognize her, she’s got her hair tucked firmly out of the way in a Yankee’s cap, and she’s wearing an old bear of jeans she stole from Clint and a loose-fitting t-shirt she can’t remember buying.

She looks completely unlike the Black Widow, and that’s definitely okay for now.

The library is, as she thought it would be, a complete mess. There’s plaster dust absolutely everywhere and nearly every window needs to be replaced. Someone has anonymously donated a truly absurd amount of money (she privately suspects Tony), however, and so even as a public institution they’re able to get materials and help to fix everything. It’s messy and hard and completely what she needed.

So Natasha mourns in the only way she knows how, by shutting down emotion and throwing herself into the job. Within a month, the library is ready to begin lending again, and she’s received three separate job offers from various librarians and supervisors, who she’s had to politely turn down.

She does stay a while, though, tucks herself deep in the stacks and just sits in the safety brought by thousands of books and millions of pages and so many silent, attentive words. 

“He isn’t gone.” She whispers to the paper, “He’s too bull-headed to surrender.”

 

 

And Natasha Romanov refuses to say goodbye to the memory of Phil Coulson, a rare someone who was trusted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow will be two short (one of them is less than two hundred words, to give you some idea) chapters as I try to bribe myself to write my lab report. :)


	5. Interlude - Phil

**Interlude – Phil**

 

_“Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.”_

_-Bill Cosby_

Coulson isn’t sure how much time passes (if, indeed, time is something that holds meaning here) while he and the Ferryman stare at each other, and he doesn’t really care. Stubborn is his job description. 

(Well, “frighteningly competent, reckless, deadly, stubborn, nondescript, persuasive, trustworthy, loyal, and responsible” is part of his job description. But that just leaves out the boring but required details like his ability to work with Fury, Hill, Clint, and/or Natasha on any given day. Or Stark, at any time. Stark was almost worse than all of the above, but probably wouldn’t shoot him.)

 The boat doesn’t even sway as they stand and stare and eternity passes around them, and Coulson doesn’t notice.

 

Because Phil Coulson has conviction in spades and he will out-stubborn God Himself if that’s what it takes to get home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give me a bit to finish the homework I'm ~~procrastinating on~~ taking a break from and I'll have that other chapter I promised up. :)


	6. 4 - Steve

**2 – Steve**

 

_“Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er,_

_Dream of fighting fields no more_

_Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,_

_Morn of trial, or night of waking.”  
            -Walter Scott_

When Steve gets on his bike and drives away, he doesn’t stop driving.

Because he doesn’t like making people worried, however, he _did_ tell Agent Hill that he just wanted to go and see what had changed. She had given him a credit card, explanations on how to use it, and instructions to call at least every other day.

So he spends the weeks after the attack just moving from town to town, visiting a few cities but mostly seeking out small places with a sense of patience. He needs a safe place to adjust to everything, to learn what normal people are like in this century, not just to learn about SHIELD agents and sort-of-superheros.

He needs some time to think.

He buys a sketchbook in a tiny shop in Michigan, charcoal and pencils from a fancy stationary store in Ohio. The art supplies begin to build up slowly, and the sketchbook starts to fill.

He’s sitting in some tiny park in Georgia, absently sketching whatever his hands feel like drawing, when he notices that he has an audience.

She sees him notice her, looks a little guilty, and returns to watching her child on the playground. But she doesn’t move from the other side of the bench, and Steve relaxes.

He looks down and realizes with a start what he’s drawing. Coulson stares levely back at him, all seriousness unless you start to look, to see where there's a crinkle around his eyes from laughter and a quirk to his mouth that might almost be an approving smile. Until you see the hope and awe in his eyes that Steve suspects very few people have ever seen (and can't help but think he doesn't deserve).

He must make some sort of noise because the young mother looks at him, concern in her eyes.

“Are you alright?” she aks, and he can only nod quietly and go back to drawing.

After a few minutes of silence, as Steve’s hands start to slow down and perfect details instead of rushing to get everything onto the paper, she offers, “Would you like to talk about it?”

He considers the offer, and says, “No. But his name was Phil Coulson, and he saved the world.”

 

And Steve Rogers hands the woman a ripped page from a sketchbook and in a small way honors a comrade.


	7. 5 - Bruce

**5 – Bruce**

 

_“Con disavvantaggio grande si fa la Guerra con chi non ha che perdere”_

_(We fight to great disadvantage when we fight those who have nothing to loose)_

_-Francesco Guicciardini_

Bruce spends two days with Tony before he gets on a plane to Venezuela.

Immediately, he throws himself into helping those who can’t afford help and going where that takes him, and within a few weeks he’s wound up in a tiny village where he’s settled and the inhabitants have more or less adopted him. It’s very different from where he was before the whole debacle with SHIELD and saving the world, disappearing in a big city is easier but he’d almost gotten used to Tony in just a few days, and this sense of belonging is… nice.

He finds that he likes this place. The only things worth getting angry about are the lack of available aid and education, and the horrible self-entitlement of America that he had seen again only a few weeks ago and can’t help comparing with this community that makes do or does without.

But the aid and the education he can only help with as himself, and not even the Other Guy would be able to deal with the last, so Bruce gets to live quietly and mostly happily. (Besides, he thinks he understands the Other Guy a bit more now – there was less destruction when there was something to protect, and that might just be the key.)

He also gets to improve his Spanish.

Bruce brought some books with him, for that purpose, but also simply because at his core he is a scientist and he cannot pass up an opportunity to discover or to learn or to teach. And gradually, the children begin to gather to listen to him read out loud and he eventually shows them how to form letters and words and sentences. And gradually, the adults come to him when something is truly broken or needs improving and they work with him to find a better way of doing things. And gradually, the elders let him sit with them as they talk, and he learns, and it is almost enough.

On evening an elder turns to him with concern in her eyes and says “tell us about your ghost.”

And, amazingly, he finds that he does. He explains Phil Coulson and how maybe it would have been different, if only. (But he says nothing about the Other Guy, about the Avengers and what might have happened to the world if it didn’t work – only that Phil Coulson had saved them all).

By the time the story is over, he has completely exhausted both his Spanish vocabulary and his voice.

The elder who prompted the story nods, apparently satisfied, and Bruce finds himself more at peace than he’s been in months.

 

And when Bruce Banner leaves behind a small stack of books in a little village in Venezuela, tucked under a plastic bag to protect them should it rain, he also leaves a story about a man, who he might have called “friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that leaves Clint. And then another really short epilogue.  
> Both should be up tomorrow. :)


	8. 6 - Clint

**6 – Clint**

 

_“Home they brought him slain with spears_

_They brought him home at even-fall”_

_-Alfred Tennyson_

Clint doesn’t go to the memorial, so he doesn’t know who of the others went. But he doesn’t really care because the whole thing is a lie.

 

Phil’s family has always thought that he was only a non-specific government bureaucrat, good at getting things done but never exceptional enough to be promoted to a point where he had much authority. They’ve been told that he’d died when the building collapsed. The people who raised him, sent him to college (where Clint knows he met Nick Fury entirely by accident and then the whole elegant mess that was SHIELD had begun to take shape in the physical world, outside of Fury’s imagination) and cared for him for so many years of his life, who in the past few decades had mostly only exchanged Christmas gifts and birthday cards and greetings at weddings and nieces birthdays with him… they don’t know a thing about Phil. Not how he lived, and not even how he died. They don’t know how many lives he’d saved over the years, they don’t know that he’d stood up to spies and snipers and Tony Stark and Nick Fury and dictators and soldiers and generals and once (accidentally) the President and _actual, freaking **gods.**_

They don’t know about Clint, they were fed the same lie about the cellist that Phi had told Stark (it was safer, they both knew, and they both tried to keep a little bit of the truth embedded in it, to feel like they weren’t lying to themselves as well – and so the cellist had a bow and on the rare occasions Clint offered any information there was always the mention of nice suits in his banker).

Clint knows he can’t just show up and perpetuate that lie, he just can’t do that to himself. So he doesn’t go.

He does, however, visit the grave.

Frequently. 

At first, every moment he can find to steal away is spent at Phil’s grave, staring at the headstone and trying to wrap his head around how unfair everything is. He stands under an umbrella in the rain, or sits down on sun-warmed grass. Sometimes he brings flowers, sometimes he brings pastries, sometimes he cries, sometimes he talks.

Mostly, though, he takes his time and thinks and quietly mourns.

Gradually, his visits slow to once or twice a week, and that’s fine. But the first time he goes on a mission that lasts more than a week, he feels, extremely strongly, that he _must_ go back.

Because, really, he hasn’t come to terms with anything. He still turns to smile at someone who’s not there, he still mouths off on the comms and waits for the quietly amused reprimand and request for radio silence that doesn’t come, he still sleeps on the right side of the bed only, one arm draped over the empty space where Phil belongs.

And so immediately after the debrief (and hey – Sitwell’s a great guy and all, but it still hurts just so much that Phil’s _not there._ ) the first thing he does is go and plop down in front of Phil’s grave and realize, with something like despair, that it’s been six months since the attack.

Six months since he lost everything.

He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there, or when she showed up, but at some point the granddaughter of the cemetery’s groundskeeper sits down next to him and just stays there. She’s quiet, and not a bother, and probably no older than eight, so he resolves to ignore her.

They sit in silence for a long while, before she asks, quiet, like she’s afraid to break the peace, “Who was he?”

Clint breaths in, shaky, trying to properly convey all that Phil was, all that he’d done, to this stranger who’d never met him and could never truly know just how much he meant.

“His name was Phil Coulson, and I loved him and he… he died for us all.”  
  
She nods, as solemn as is possible for an (probably)-eight-year-old, and turns back to the gravestone. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Coulson.” She says, and Clint’s heart melts and breaks and mends just a little bit all at the same time. 

“Want to hear a story?” He asks after a while passes in silence, and she nods with a small, excited smile.

  

And Clint Barton sits on the grass and shares in turn the most heroic, embarrassing, and charming stories he can think of about Phil Coulson with a small girl until the sun goes down, and for the first time in a long time, smiles just a little.


	9. Epilogue - Phil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it guys. The last huzzah, in just barely over 150 words.  
> Thanks so much for all of your comments, bookmarks, kudos, and general niceness. :) I realize this was sort of weird with the chapter lengths, but I really wanted it broken up into each person's individual experience - thanks so much for patience on that end.
> 
> This fic actually took three tries to write, because the first two came out way more sarcastic than I wanted them to (and also Coulson stayed dead, which kind of sucks). I still like those versions, they just weren't what I wanted for this, and so you'll probably get some sort of similarly-terribly-organized Ghost!Phil nonsense with a bajillion percent less angst and considerably more humor.   
> ... Eventually.
> 
> So once again, thank you all, and I hope you've enjoyed this!

**Epilogue – Phil**

_“There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall.”_

_-Bernard Malamud_

The Ferryman cocks its head silently, the only move either figure has made in an eternity, as if it could hear something in the dead silence.

Without warning, it vanishes abruptly, and Phil is left watching as the dark river, wider than any he’s ever seen and stretching off into infinity in either direction, which has flowed gently and constantly throughout however-long he’s been here, staring without blinking, fades away.

He hears the soft and stead beeping of medical equipment faintly at first, then more strongly, insisting he pay attention, and wakes up to see Nick Fury leaning over him to glare – almost gently, which is odd – with his one eye somehow into both of Phil’s.

“Welcome back, agent.” He says.

 

And Phil finally blinks, because he’s won.

**Author's Note:**

> also posted as cucurbita.tumblr.com


End file.
